Creativity is an essential skill for the 21st Century that is innate in all people and can be nurtured. We constantly need new and better ideas for almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives. The goal of this course is to help you recognize, develop and act upon the creativity that you already possess. We will accomplish this using three methods: b aware, b inspired, and b creative.
Upon completion of this course participants will:
Recognize the inherent creativity in yourself and others.
Identify characteristics of a creative person that relate to yourself.
Develop creative problem solving skills using the basic elements of the creative process.
Examine qualities of a creative environment in real world settings.
Evaluate an idea using the creative product criteria.

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The Creative Process

In this module, we will be featuring the skill Break Through and Extend the Boundaries. This skill is about thinking outside of the prescribed requirements. You may know it better by the phrase “think outside the box” – but we want you to think of it as more than that. Expanding the boundaries is a skill that everyone possesses (though it can be developed and honed through practice), and is integral to creativity and problem solving. For example, have you ever had a child, student, or colleague who was perfectly content to give run-of-the-mill answers to intriguing questions? Sure, the answers were applicable and solved the problem at hand, but they lacked the innovation and excitement that you were after. Then one day, in frustration, you told that person to “think outside the box” – and he astounded you with an answer that was completely out of left field! As you go through this module’s lessons, we would like you to consider the following things: • Are you thinking beyond the prescribed requirements? • How does extending the boundaries spark your imagination? • When deliberately employing this skill, do you feel more creative? We encourage you to keep this description handy, as we will be asking you to apply this skill throughout the module. Ready? Let’s get started! *Skill taken from Torrance, E.P., & Safter, H.T. (1999). Making the creative leap beyond… Hadley, MA: Creative Education Foundation Press.